Tuesday, June 28, 2011

I was listening to episode 8 of 40KUK and was intrigued by an Eldar army present at the tourney. I forget the fella's name but in essence it was a seer council list that ran in a suicide wave serpent. The idea was that Eldrad, Yriel and 10 Warlocks speed forward into the heart of the opponent first opportunity the unit is fortuned but the wave serpent is not. Next turn the council multi-assault pounces. What was intriguing is that the goal is to have the serpent blow up in the opponents turn effectively giving the squad a free 6" movement towards the enemy when they charge out of the crater left behind from the wave serpent.

I think this is a great idea and came up with a list that tries to incorporate this tactic:

So Eldrad rides with 5 Avengers in the fortuned Falcon and every unit but the warlocks pushes a flank hard first turn in formation. The Wave Serpent with warlocks tubo's and star engines a total of 36" to the front center of the opponent. Everything depends on how the opponent reacts. Hopefully the bulk of opposing firepower if focused on the immediate threat of the warlocks will scarcely scratch my refused flank attack. With this set up then the warlocks are in a position to multi assault the center of the opponents forces cutting his/her army in half. Because of the 36" movement in the first turn, the warlocks should be able to spend their movement spreading out laterally to grab as much as possible in their multi assult.

This leaves the core of my army able to focus on roughly a third of my opponents list safe from reprisals as they pounce on the flank. The three infantry units have enough redundancy built into them that should a wave serpent go down, any two that are left will be in position to wreak havoc supported by Eldrad. Plus I have three heavy tanks that are very durable in position to maximize firepower.

While expensive, the Warlocks are ultimately a distraction unit that's sole purpose is to disrupt the opponents intial formation. Playing in such an aggressive manner also has the benefit of forcing the opponent to react and likely change their battle plan. I envision this tactic working well against a mech gun line. The Warlocks have the potential to bring 33 strength 9 attacks against rear armour. Because turn two they spread out, fleet, assault they should be able to assault a good 12-15" line of tanks.

Its just an idea but after listening to the 40KUK podcast I think its not half bad. Anyway what do you all think?

I likely missed some of the options he took but this was roughly the list I faced. First things first this was a tough fight. I eked out a win but I was lucky at the end and my opponent was new to the guard. For future games against the guard I think its going to be a tough slog.

Anyway we rolled dawn of war and 3 objectives. The guard had first turn and deployed his command squad and platoon. He declared that his vendetta with vets would outflank. I opted to come on the board bottom of turn one.

My first mistake was to place my fireprisms in my corners. I was playing a refused flank and moved flat out first turn on my right flank (looking to take out his devil-dog second turn). I led the charge with the wave serpents as I thought they stood the best chance of surviving a turn of shooting against his devil dog. Hindsight is 20/20 and if I had kept my fire prism together on the right flank I could have protected them better from his outflanking vendetta.

Turn two, his vendetta came in on my left flank. Vets pop out and take out my fireprism. The 3 twinlinked lascannons don't do much (one wave serpent cannot fire next turn). He was in position to unload his command squad and they immobilize my avenger wave serpent. Now I think he made a mistake by taking them out of the tank. I believe he could have taken his shots from within the tank. Anyway, not too concerned about the immobilized tank as it went down close to an objective and was in cover providing a nice bunker for my Avengers until late game. The fire prism hurt though. If I was more savvy and placed all my tanks on the right flank two things would have happened to my benefit.

If the vendetta came in on the right flank it would only have been able to get off 1 twin-linked shot and the vet squad would have taking out a tank. I could then be able to counter in turn two with all my fire power against this unit.

If the vendetta came in on the left flank, the vets would not have been in range to deploy (though I would have faced 3 twin linked shots).

My second turn saw the dragons disembark behind cover from the bulk of his army and take out his devil-dog. My Avengers disembark and wipe out his command squad. My wave serpents shut down the command squad chimera from shooting. The lone fire prism is now trying to take out the vendetta. As an aside, that fireprism managed to hit the vendetta the entire game (luck was with me there) but only managed one pen that resulted in denying the vendetta a turn of shooting.

Turn three, saw his blob squad advance down the river to an objective and my fire prism immobilized by the vendetta. I also lost 2 dragons to lasgun fire. My response was to reembark my troops, and move my guardians and dragons to his board edge. I shoot to minimal effect though I shut down shooting on his vendetta for turn four.

Turn four, his vendetta had swooped over to my Avengers and he disembarked his vets. The vets fail to blow up the wave serpent and the vendetta does little to my fireprism. I responded by taking out his vets with my Avengers I then moved my fire dragon wave serpent and guardian wave serpent into position to grab/contest objectives for turn five.

Turn Five he immobilized my guardian wave serpent with his leman russ and did little with his vendetta. My guardians along with the farseer get lucky and roll high on their move through cover roll and run roll and get behind cover to claim an objective. The immobilized wave serpent then takes out the back field chimera. My Fire Dragon wave serpent goes all out and contested the midfield objective held by his blob squad and my Avengers are on an objective contested by his vendetta. I have the game if it ends here.

Turn six, game on. Well, I figure at best I can do now is tie the game. The vendetta cannot do much to my Avengers and the guardians should last a turn of shooting in cover. The guard though try and take out my fire dragon serpent with the platoon command squad. Major mistake on his part. He had the mobility to move them to the rear of my tank with his chimera. Did not do so and tried to shoot it from the front with the protection of the Wave Serpent energy shield. The Fire Dragon wave serpent survives intact. My Guardians with farseer move up as close as they can behind cover and take a shot at his leman russ with 2 melta guns and a singing spear. I get lucky. Hit with one melta gun and one singing spear. Rolled two sixes for pen. The end result was that his leman russ would not be able to shoot should the game go to turn 7.

Turn 7, yup it was a long game. The Guard was not able to move my guardians off the objective and my wave serpent with fire dragons survive to contest and we ended the game there.

Over all I was lucky at the end of the game and won largely because this was my opponents first game with guard at this level. If he had of kept his blob squad on his home objective supported by the leman russ and focused the rest of his army to capture one objective I think he would have had the game. Also, in hindsight he should have been able to take out my Fire Dragon wave serpent as well.

All in all a fun game, though I think the guard will prove to be troublesome once they gain some more experience.

The photo is poor quality and does not show how well the nids are painted. The mission was annihilation with standard deployment. It was the inaugural game on my new board. The final score was 6-4 for the Eldar. It was a close game though, down to the wire until the end. Ultimately what screwed up the Nids was spawning easy kill points for the Eldar. His Hive Guard did extremely well and knocked out a wave serpent and a fire prism.

Over all I'm happy with how my list performed. The extra Shuriken Cannon on my tanks paid off in spades. Although some turns the extra shots were sacrificed for speed, having the ability to hold the lines and increase my firepower output worked out well for me. I lost a fire prism; however, I think loosing the holo-fields and stones was worth it. I was able to get two turns of shooting the big pie plate with two tanks. Turn three the main gun was blown off and I was able to squeeze another round of shooting with the cannon on turn four before loosing the tank on turn five.

If I was to change anything I think I might alter the Avenger squad. As it stands they alone only managed to clean up a depleted gargoyle squad then survive. I might replace the wave serpent and 10 Avengers for 5 Avengers and a Holo-Field Falcon with shuriken cannon and star engines. The tank is hardier and likely able to survive until late game to grab objectives with the star engines.

As for the nids, if this had been an objective mission I think the nids would have done better if not take the game. We thought some changes were required to his list though. Drop the Hive Tyrant and Tyrant guard and fill out his hive guard. The only problem with these changes is the lack of ability to deal with av14 with only 2 MC's.

Anyway the real highlight of the game was playing on my new board. Looking forward to getting some games in at my leisure unbeholden to my local GW store's gaming night schedule.

Friday, June 10, 2011

I've a notion lately to spam storm guardians in a mech style Eldar list for competitive play. I still stand by my idea that the Grey Knights has breathed new life into the Eldar codex. The Eldar naturally match up against the Grey Knights with RoW and their ability to spam melta. From the net lists I've been reading and my take on the Grey Knights codex, their competitive lists include heavy bolter razorback spam, autocannon dreds, inquisitors wielding conversion beemers and retinues. Its a lot of strength 6, 8 and 10 spammed shots with tons o'psychic powers thrown into the mix.

As it stands I have two lists that I'm working on tailored to meet this tournament threat. Both lists spam melta by way of fire dragons and storm guardians along with loads of strength 6 fire power coming from wave serpents. One sacrifices RoW for dual autarchs and their +2 reserve roll. The other has a sole Farseer HQ bunkered in a fortuned falcon which role is to absorb shots and shut down psychics. The lists are as follows:

Both lists bring over 40 potential strength 6 shots a turn and 25 melta shots. The idea behind the lists is that I have the speed to strike at the long range threats to my army with all my split melta shots. Both lists have built in redundancy and scoring options to meet all sorts of objectives that might be required. I'm not sure though on whether it is better to reserve my army thereby denying the opponent 2 turns of shooting or include the psychic defence of RoW combined with hardier wave serpents.

With the Autarchs I gain an extra round of shooting against my opponent and can alpha strike when I come on the board. Having a lower tank count against more modern armies is mitigated by denying two turns of shooting. With respect to Grey Knights the fortitude power is addressed by hitting his armour with melta guns. I have two hard tanks (falcons) that sit back and reliably score late game. Finally, with this list when I come on the board I present my opponent with a target priority problem. Each unit is expendable and costs relatively the same amount of points.

If I go the way of the Farseer, I gain RoW, and my tanks are more hardy with the inclusion of stones, but I now face an extra two turns of being shot up. Not sure which way to go.

Now this is an idea and an expensive one at that. In order to model the list I need another 30 to 40 storm guardians and 4 more wave serpents. I've begun trolling ebay and kijiji looking to buy storm guardians that way. To buy them direct from GW would cost around $450. So for now proxy is king and I will test out my theory. I've also installed Vassal and will try my hand there to test out my lists. That's all for now, have a good one interweb.

The list has built in redundancy and incorporates the 4+2 build that Stelek prefers. Probably not the best but I think a contender. The added benefit is that it has the ability to shorten the game by two turns.

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Warpstone Flux has an interesting challenge on the go right now, build a 1500 point list for as cheap as possible so that a new player might enter the game on a budget and still have a decent army. I suggested a death company force that came in around $237 USD. After thinking about it some more I came up with the following 2k death company list that would cost about $400 USD to buy from GW.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

I've changed the list I want for my first 1k. Dropped upgrades like exarch's, warlock's and holo-fields so that I can squeeze in another Fire Prism. Managed to work on the guardian wave serpent and have the yellow painted up. Think I will turn to the fire dragon wave serpent next and nail down its colours then on to the last Fire Prism. I plan to hold of on final highlights on my tanks untill all the base coats are down. The tanks are slow going but I want to make sure I'm happy with them. When they are done I've still a load of work to do on my infantry. For now I think I will try and touch up the Avengers, but I'm starting to think of painting up ten more from scratch (they are already assembled). As a positive aside, the more I get completed on this first 1k of Eldar the less urge I have to switch tracks again and go back to the Flesh Tearer's.

About Me

I've recently picked up warhammer 40k and warhammer fantasy as a hobby after a 14 year hiatus. Currently I have three armies that I am working on. Eldar, Flesh Tearer's and Lizardmen. All three are at various stages of incompletion. The purpose of this blog will be to catalogue my progress as I assemble and paint my various armies. In addition I will discuss army lists, tactics and other aspects to this hobby as I continue to develop my armies.